(The Center Square) – President Joe Biden is taking criticism after the IRS said it will go after service industry tips in a new effort to increase collection.
The IRS issued new guidance this week for a “voluntary tip reporting program” for service industry employers.
The plan allows for the “monitoring of employer compliance based on actual annual tip revenue and charge tip data from an employer’s point-of-sale system, and allowance for adjustments in tipping practices from year to year.”
The IRS incentivizes employers to allow this monitoring by saying “employers receive protection from liability” and that it makes them less likely to receive a “compliance review” from the IRS.
“Participating employers demonstrate compliance with the program requirements by submitting an annual report after the close of the calendar year, which reduces the need for compliance reviews by the IRS,” the IRS said.
Republicans blasted Biden over the new plan.
“Stop the presses. No need to raise the debt limit,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. “Biden is going after those billionaire waitresses’ tips,” he added, apparently referencing Biden’s call for a billionaires tax.
The effort comes the same week Biden emphasized in his State of the Union address that no one making less than $400,000 will pay more in taxes.
In the speech, Biden also called for the “wealthiest and biggest corporations to begin to pay their fair share,” and proposed quadrupling the tax on corporate stock buybacks from 1% to 4%, a proposal critics say would cost countless jobs.
“Look, I’m a capitalist, but pay your fair share,” Biden said. “The idea that in 2020, 55 of the largest corporations in America, the Fortune 500, made $40 billion in profits and paid zero in federal taxes … folks, it’s simply not fair.”
Biden also touted the 15% minimum tax on book income passed in the Inflation Reduction Act in his speech.
A more aggressive IRS is not new. Biden has made clear since taking office that it is a key part of his agenda. The president pushed for greater IRS enforcement to fund some of his spending as an alternative to raising taxes. The main thrust of that plan came through the previous Democrat-led Congress funding 87,000 new IRS agents to audit Americans and thus increase revenue.
“Joe Biden’s radical war on the working class just expanded to tipped workers, further proof that working-class Americans who make less than $75,000 will bear the brunt of over 710,000 new IRS audits under the newly supercharged IRS,” said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo. “While the president talked a big game about going after billionaires in his partisan State of the Union address, it’s clear that the White House is doubling down on crazy and prioritizing going after hardworking middle-class employees.”
House Republicans voted to defund Biden’s extra IRS agents earlier this year, but that bill will almost certainly not become law on Biden’s watch.
“When Biden says the IRS is going after millionaires and billionaires, apparently he means the ones that are waitresses living off of tips,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.
“Biden is going after those billionaire waitresses’ tips,” …… Waiter, waitresses and bartenders usually make LESS than minimum wage.
I don’t think there is any waiter, waitresses and bartender that makes $400,000.00 per year!
Biden emphasized in his State of the Union address that no one making less than $400,000 will pay more in taxes.
So how can your IRS go after the usually very poor waiters, waitresses and bartenders making less than $400,000.00 per year??
Federal taxes include excises taxes of 18.3 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents per gallon on diesel fuel, State Tax can be as high as 53.9 cents per gallon. EVERYTHING AND EVERYBODY is taxed. Our corrupt politicians waste our tax dollars and demand more. The Democrat motto has always been over tax and over spend.
Why do we the U.S.A. give billions of dollars to our country’s enemies? sell our national oil reserve to China?? Give Ukraine billions of dollars to secure their borders but won’t secure our own borders??
“Biden sent more than 15x the amount of money Trump asked for to complete our border wall to the Ukraine to defend their border.”
But now Biden wants to go after the poor waiters, waitresses and bartenders.
What of all those “under the table cash workers’, a LARGE CHUNK OF WHICH are illegal invaders?? How’s about going after THEM!>!?!?!?
The current Biden IRS planned attacks on our working people’s tips, is just the TIps of the iceberg they have aimed at the American middle class whom they fear, whose defunding and financial weakening is their prime objective to neutralize any and all sections of THE PEOPLE who can create, earn and gather the means and personal property that makes them capable to defend themselves from the socialist onslaught of woke re-distributuion of real wealth and opportunity to be able to live free unchained from being socially dependent upon a socialist government of incompetents who can never earn, but only steal life force from others to sustain their insane, crazy imaginations of how other people should live, spend their lives and spend their hard earned wages.
So these people are now making over $400,000 a year? Sign me up to wait tables
The MOST i’ve ever known a waiter to make, in tips, was (inc his tips) 85k a year.. AND HE WORKED IN LONDON! (that’s adjusted for current exchange rates)..
Only “Useful idiots” would continue to vote for these DemonRats and RINOs. They’re agenda has been the destruction of America and any other society that would stand for freedom, peace, and prosperity.
This is all out war! They have waged it against us and this great country that was founded and paid for by the blood of patriots since the Revolutionary war.
If freedom loving citizens don’t stand up and fight for our freedoms, this “last great hope” will fade into distant memory sooner than we think.
Let’s also not forget something Paul Harvey used to say. “Corporations don’t pay taxes, their customers do.”
So Biden wants to hit major corporations up with substantially higher taxes. Where does he think that money will come from? Out of our pockets, of course, as they’ll simply pass the tax increase on to the general population in the form of higher prices for their goods and services. Even those “billion-dollar tip earners” will get hit by those increased prices.
As it is, our money is already taxed at least 6 different ways, yet they want ever more, just like a drug addict and their favorite “poison”.
Frankly, the government is the single largest addict of them all, and they need an intervention, and a long-term treatment program.
It’s not just the IRS and their army of 87,000 goons that are the problem. The whole gubment and gubment “workers” are at fault. It’s a very systemic problem.
SO true.